Name: How Jeffrey Epstein fooled America | Today, Explained
Uploaded: 2026-03-06T16:35:11.000Z
Duration: 24 min 20 s
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Hi, and welcome to Today Explained Saturday.

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every week I'll be talking to someone in the news, in the culture, or just exploring an idea I can't get out of my head.

Now, this week is a little different because I have something embarrassing to admit.

I have not really followed the Epstein files as closely as I should have.

I've seen people losing their jobs, the former Prince Andrew getting arrested.

But like most Americans, I haven't sorted through all those documents separated truth and fiction, and

I wanted to write out everything I already knew about Epstein, the things I know to be true.

So I can also create a list of questions I still had to give it to an expert.

One, Epstein was a monster, a convicted sexual predator, first in 2008 and arrested again in 2019.

The second thing I know is that Jeffrey Epstein was ridiculously rich, and

he got rich by handling other people's money.

He was a financier, a money manager for folks like Leslie Wexner, the Victoria's Secret mogul who took that brand nationwide.

The third thing I know is that Epstein kept a group of famous rich guys around him.

Folks like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, the former Prince Andrew, and, of course, Donald Trump.

Epstein also kept a group of elite enablers, people who are at the top of the legal and finance fields.

And they were crucial to him being able to last without justice for so long.

Folks like Kathy Ruemmler, Jeff Staley, and Brad Karp.

The other thing I know about Epstein is that his life and death was shrouded in conspiracy.

There were questions about whether he used the information he knew for blackmail against powerful people, whether he was a government agent or linked to a national spy agency.

The other thing that of course, swirls around him is the question of whether he actually killed himself.

That led me to some things I wanted to know immediately, some questions I wanted to take to an expert.

First, what took so long for these files to come out?

Second, how many of the people in Jeffrey Epstein's circle were hanging out with him post conviction?

How aware were they of his sex trafficking?

The third thing I want to know is how much did his life as a money manager overlap with his activities as a trafficker?

Why were his elite enablers so attached to him?

And the last thing, and maybe the most important is what does justice for the survivors look like?

So I decided to call up Tara Palmeri, independent journalist.

Palmeri is an expert on the Epstein files.

She's dedicated several years to reporting on them.

She has talked and interviewed the victims, broke down legal documents, and

untangled the web of influence that surrounds Epstein.

And I also think Palmeri represents something important.

The independent journalists who have basically followed it from the beginning and made sure the public got answers, because it was the independent journalists who were putting the pieces together, maybe before mainstream news ever was.

You know, I think that you're the person, perfect person for us to chat with.

You know, at the end of the day, this is about exploitation.

And your reporting has focused on advocating for the voices of these survivors.

You recently wrote that the survivors remain hopeful that they might still be able to testify before Congress.

I guess my first question is, why hasn't that happened yet?

They have reached out to Pam Bondi and they want to speak with her.

And in fact, around the time when the files were first released, back in December, the original deadline, one of the survivors of Epstein told me, like, we have a request with Pambondi.

And I was like, well, can I report on it?

Because that's news, obviously, if she's going to meet with them.

And the survivor was like, please, that's off the record.

We don't want to lose this chance to sit down with her and, like, really make our case, because they are genuinely hopeful and that there would.

And of course, she had some sort of scheduling conflict, never followed up.

And as you saw in that hearing, they stood up and raised their hands when asked if any of them, like, had, like, if they had not been contacted by the FBI.

And it just seems like if this was truly an active investigation and you were following up on the leads and you would be in contact with victims who had valuable information and if you actually took their account seriously and not just seeing them as hearsay and gossip, like, I feel like that is the one thing that has been consistent throughout multiple administrations, is that they've really taken the testimonies of these victims as just, like, hearsay and gossip.

I mean, I'm struck on just how many times it seems as if law enforcement was close to closing in on him before his.

Can you isolate the kind of tipping points where, like, it seemed like in those 14 years, Jeffrey Epstein could face some sense of law enforcement or justice that he did not?

I mean, here's a few things that I have gleaned along the way from this.

First of all, Marie Via F. Who was the prosecutor in charge of this in the Southern.

Sorry, in Florida's federal prosecutor's office.

You know, she built a serious case over years.

She tracked down a lot of reluctant survivors, like, a lot of reluctant victims who felt because they were so young when they were trafficked, like.

Like, for example, Jane Doe 1, Courtney Wilde, showed up on Epstein's doorstep with braces on her teeth at 14.

And when the FBI was trying to contact her to sit down and speak with them, she ran from them.

She thought they were coming for her because he had told them that they were the ones who had committed a crime.

And he offered them his lawyer, like, he said, here, I'll protect you.

And she took his lawyers until she sat down with them.

And she got the feeling that they were trying to tell her that she was a prostitute.

So she picked up a phone book and found Brad Edwards, who has now become the lawyer for so many of the victims.

it was her best friend who told the FBI about, you know, about her and her story.

And then when she read her best friend's deposition, she was still reluctant to testify and to help, start to cry.

And it wasn't because the crime was committed against her, because she had become so dehumanized by this crime.

And that is the thing about child predation and sex trafficking.

It's so dehumanizing that so many of them, they're not running to lawyers and police and looking for help.

But when she saw that the same crime against crime that was committed against her was committed against her friend, she decided to help.

What do we know about the extent, if we think about three people in particular?

Do we know if they knew about Jeffrey Epstein sexual crimes?

I think it would be very hard to not know, because even from the evidence that the Palm beach police pulled from his home, many of the pictures in his house were Polaroids of young girls, and

Virginia Roberts Duffrey told me that when someone walked into that house in Palm beach, specifically, there were naked girls usually hanging around the pool.

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How Jeffrey Epstein fooled America | Today, Explained

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